Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

EVENTS

Mark Cuban: Skeptic

I’ve always liked Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks. I like the fact that he speaks his mind even when it pisses off the NBA and that he matches all his fines from the league with donations to charity. And here’s another reason to like him: He’s hammering the NBA for partnering up with a scam company to promote their fraudulent bracelets.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban believes that one of the NBA’s marketing deals is “a scam,” and he said Monday that he banned the product from the team’s locker room.

Cuban made his opinion clear in a video he posted to YouTube last week in which he criticized Power Balance bracelets before throwing the display case that was in the Mavericks’ locker room in the garbage.

“See this stuff?” Cuban said on the video, grabbing the display. “It was a scam when they were on ‘Shark Tank.’ It’s still a scam. I don’t care if the NBA was dumb enough to sign an agreement; this is going where it belongs.”

At that point, Cuban put the display case in a trash can.

“But have no fear, we do recycle,” Cuban said. “What are you thinking, NBA?”…

The rubber bracelets have a distinctive hologram that is “based on Eastern philosophies of health and wellness,” according to the company’s website. Power Balance bracelets featuring NBA team logos in the hologram are available for $32.99 on the league’s official website.

The NBA was thinking “There are suckers who buy this stuff and we want their money.”

But it would be an interesting experiment. Randomly assign half the teams in the league to wear them and half to not wear them. If they’re worth $33 plus tax, we should see vast improvement in certain teams vs the control group.

If we combine the ancient Eastern principles with some ancient Egyptian principles, we could wrap a player’s entire body up with Power Balance materials and he should lead the league in scoring.

Jack Taylor, the player who recently scored 138 points in a college game, would have scored 300 points if he hadn’t missed so many shots due to lack of Power Balance bracelets.

Kyle @2:
I am going to watch Loose Change. Not that I am a rabid truther, but the more I think about it, the less sense the ‘truth’, as given by the Bush administration, makes. Call me an “untruther”. Something doesn’t add up.

Unfortunately, I think if you really did something like assign half the teams to wear the bracelet, the only thing that would get noticed is if the championship team was wearing them. Otherwise, it would be forgotten. You know, count the hits, forget the misses and all that.

reverendrodney, you should read the work done by Popular Mechanics on the topic of 9/11. You’ll find they addressed most of those things that “don’t add up”. It’s so easy to get misled by all the tripe out there, and some otherwise intelligent people coming on board.

It’s usually best, I think, to go into a “things don’t add up” conspiracy theory with the realization that, in an event as complex as 9/11, they often won’t (or won’t appear to, if you don’t have the technical knowledge or background to appreciate more than mere appearance). “Loose Change” amounts to a loose compendium of “I don’t understand this, therefore it Doesn’t Add Up.” Hard core conspiracy-theorists are like creationists, in this and many other ways; things that don’t add up must mean conspiracy (or god). Of course, all those things really point to are lack of understanding; and holes in one fabric can’t make another.

The anti-Truther movie “Screw Loose Change” pretty much demolishes every claim in “Loose Change” IMHO. I’m far from being even vaguely educated in physics or building materials but they bring in some of the Popular Mechanics piece and do a good job of tearing down the wide use of fallacies.

The way I look at it, just having the planes crash into the Twin Towers would have been enough to galvanize the American public into supporting an invasion of Afghanistan. There would have been no need to bring down the towers by remote demolition. The inside job conspiracy has what I call a Rube Goldberg problem.

But it would be an interesting experiment. Randomly assign half the teams in the league to wear them and half to not wear them.

If this is supposed to be a real experiment, then it has to be blinded. Everyone has to get a bracelet, and it must be impossible for anyone to tell whether they’re wearing a ‘real’ Powerbalance bracelet or a fake one. And, when results are counted, those doing the recording or judging must not be aware of who was wearing what. Double-blinded. Make sure controls are tight.

Otherwise, as people here have been pointing out, it will prove nothing.

And then the results have to be replicated. Several times, at least, to be sure.

If Powerbalance fails the test, though, probably no need for replication. Probably no need for test in the first place, either. The underlying mechanism is implausible crap.

At this year’s TAM in Vegas, I got to watch someone test something very like a Powerbalance bracelet in a well-designed preliminary Randi’s Million $ Challenge test. Very slow… but sure. The best part was listening to the surprised guy who lost try to explain why the results meant nothing.